StickWithANose

To the uninitiated, my habit of referring to the growing charter school movement as the corporate takeover of public education may appear to be a bit hyperbolic, but I am afraid that is the name of the game. The lobbyists and propagandists of education reform may couch their ‘reforms’ in the language of academic achievement, but in reality their goal is to get on the government teat.  The charter school movement is little more than a conduit for corporate welfare. For example… EdWeek:

A national charter school company that plans to open new schools in Texas has run afoul of an education official in Nevada and two of its former principals, and they all pose the same question.

Does Imagine Schools Inc. force its charter schools to spend too much money on complex real estate deals and not enough money on teachers and academic programs?

Virginia-based Imagine Schools has emerged as one of the largest for-profit charter school management companies, running several dozen schools in 12 states. It plans to open Imagine International Academy of North Texas in McKinney next year…

Typically, after an Imagine-managed charter school gets approval to open, Schoolhouse Finance, Imagine’s real estate arm, purchases a campus and charges the school rent. After the school begins to pay that rent, Schoolhouse sells the campus to a real estate investment trust, which then leases it back to Schoolhouse.

The charter school eventually sends rent payments – in one case upward of 40 percent of the school’s entire publicly funded budget – to two for-profit companies.

“The arrangement is very lucrative because it’s a direct conduit to public funds. The school [property] is paid off with public funds,” said Gary Horton, who oversees charter school funding for the Nevada Department of Education. Nevada’s charter schools include Imagine’s 100 Academy of Excellence in North Las Vegas…

Texas began awarding charters to private operators a decade ago with a simple idea: giving parents an alternative to traditional public schools. The schools are privately run, but the state treasury sends about $6,000 a year to a charter school for each enrolled student.